Roadmap to Success: Interactive Timeline With Resources for Fellowship Scholarly Activity.

Fellowship trainees balance clinical work and scholarly activities that are necessary to graduate fellowship. Strategies for success in fellowship include (1) following a strict timeline with frequent re-evaluation of progress, and (2) participating in national groups for access to resources otherwise not provided by a home institution.1 Mentorship, resources, and support may be limited within an institution for less traditional areas of scholarship, such as medical education, global health, and quality improvement. Program leadership and fellows may need to explore external resources.The Trainees and Early Career Neonatologists (TECaN) subcommittee within the Section on Neonatal Perinatal Medicine (SONPM) developed interactive roadmaps to supplement resources provided at local institutions (Figure). The aim of the roadmaps is to provide a timeline for fellow scholarly activity synchronized with clinical requirements, conferences, and extramural grant deadlines.Roadmaps allow individuals to identify goals and follow recommendations of necessary actions. Each roadmap is divided into the 3 years of fellowship with a summary of quarterly “milestones.” Resources mapped along the roadmap include extramural grants, conferences, abstract submission deadlines, and national educational resources. Each of these resources are hyperlinked to the corresponding source.Resources highlighted in the first year provide background knowledge, training modules, mentorship, and project ideas. The second year focuses on presenting preliminary work at local or national conferences, additional training, and grant applications. Lastly, the third year focuses on the job search, provides tips on how to publish scholarly work, and guides the transition from trainee to early-career neonatologist. Each roadmap is tailored to the specific area of scholarship, but the uniform structure and design enables easy navigation.These interactive road maps were built and hosted on Google Slides (Alphabet Inc., Mountain View, California), then embedded to the TECaN website for public access. TECaN members contributed to the development of these roadmaps. Each roadmap required 3 to 5 months for completion, with input from 2 to 6 contributors per roadmap. Technical aspects were entirely drafted by TECaN volunteers at no additional cost.A survey conducted during a virtual meeting in May 2021 allowed 71 neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship program directors (PDs) and associate program directors (APDs) to provide feedback about the roadmaps. Fifty-eight (82%) participated in the survey. Only 33% (19 of 58) of respondents were aware of the TECaN roadmaps prior to this meeting, with two-thirds of these PDs having recommended the roadmaps to their trainees. Nearly all respondents “agree” or “strongly agree” (96%, 56 of 58) that their fellowship trainees “will benefit from using the roadmaps as a template to achieve their specific scholarly goals.” Two-thirds of PDs and APDs feel that the roadmaps are equally beneficial across the 3 years of fellowship training. Notably, only 7% (4 of 58) of respondents were aware of any national-level resources similar to the TECaN roadmaps, and only 20% (12 of 58) had institution-specific guides for their trainees that covered the same material as the TECaN roadmaps.Scholarly roadmaps are useful resources to neonatal-perinatal medicine fellows, their fellowship PDs, and research mentors. They provide easy-to-understand timelines for trainees with comprehensive lists of conferences, grants, and journals within a trainee's area of interest. They are especially critical for less traditional areas of scholarship where resources and experts may be limited or scattered across institutions. This highly feasible and accessible tool has been well received by training programs and PDs and has amassed users from around the United States. The details described here provide the necessary information for other disciplines to adapt this tool, with the potential for wide-reaching impact.